Joel Schaefer

Background

About Joel Schaefer

I have been working professionally in the Canadian Arts industry for 5 years. I have worked across the country with companies such as Theatre Calgary, Young People's Theatre, and Alberta Theatre Projects, and have performed on stages including The Four Seasons Centre and Roy Thomson Hall. In addition to my skills as an Actor, Singer, Dancer, and Instrumentalist, I have dedicated most of my career to helping foster and workshop new plays and musicals, especially within Canada. To date, I have helped workshop or performed in full productions of almost a dozen original pieces of theatre and look forward to helping incubate more! I've also worked on film as an Actor and a Dancer, and have a really exciting project coming down the pipeline! I'm a member of CAEA and ACTRA, hold an Master of Arts in Musical Theatre from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and am a graduate of Randolph College for the Performing Arts. I have similarly been music directing for almost 5 years, starting in small scale productions with educational companies and working up. Most recently, I have Music Directed Storybook Theatre's production of Annie, Music Directed and Music Supervised Frozen and Matilda with Innovative Arts, and Music Directed for the New Sunshine Festival. I bring significant experience with Musical Theatre, vocal production, music theory, music production, arranging, and editing of music to help create productions that are perfectly suited to the performers in the production while maintaining the highest quality product possible. I have experience as an accompanist, conductor, and arranger, and have twice produced, music directed, and guided performers through the process of recording vocals for musical productions I have music directed. I began my career as an educator 10 years ago, and it has remained one of my passions since. I began by teaching as an early childhood educator with the City of Calgary, and have since specialized as an educator into the world of Theatre and Music. I am currently the Program Director for Innovative Arts' Musical Theatre Academy, for which I help develop curriculum, market and sell the program to potential students, create and develop relationships with students and staff members, and teach a large part of the program. As a teacher, I specialize in vocal coaching, musical theatre technique, musical theatre history, acting coaching and teaching, and vocal and performance pedagogy. My previous experience includes teaching with the Randolph Kids program, ACTE, and CATS, and Assistant and Substitute teaching with RCPA.